Queen of the Bad Faeries

Here in the light of the waning moon is the Queen of the Bad Faeries. In Scotland she is known as Nicniven, Queine of the Unseelie Court. In Germany, she's Berchta, leading the savage dogs of the wild hunt. In Spain she is the Queen of the Estantigua, the ancient host of spirits, telling all she meets: "Travel by day, for the night belongs to me.
Her domain is night. She rules over dusk and darkness, shadows and shades.
The Dark Queen's power emanates from the dark side of the moon.
Much is secret and dark here, cloaked by dark and illusion.
Out of the gloaming beckons the faery woman whose enchanments create madness. An Irish banshee wails her death song, echoed by La Llorona, her baleful cousin in the American west.
Black Annis, the wretched blue-faced hag, sits and grinds her long white teeth.
Hobgoblins and boggles torment the ghostly black dogs who haunt dark country lanes.
The human dead are ambassadors to the courtof this dark faery queen, for the mounds that faeries inhabit were burial mounds in centuries past.
But every shroud has a silver lining. All things must die to be reborn.
The transformative power of faery turns muck into magick, dross into shining gold, black despair into crystalline joy. Just as life grows out of death, good can grow from those things we call bad.
The banshee cry fortells change, not death.
Blue-faced hags, if we pass the test and embrace them, turn into beautiful women - or perhaps it's not the hags who change, but merely our vision of them.
In Irish folklore, hags were once revered as powerful wisewomen, credited with building the ancient cairns and Ireland's sacred mountains.


Fluff Faery
You may have glimpsed this fuzzy fellow out of the corner of your eye. Fluff is his favorite substance.
He lives under a bed, down the back of a sofa, or inside a vacuum cleaner ( his idea of faery heaven ).
He doesn't mean to cause harm but, he just can't help getting fluff on new CDs or sticky candy.
Hair in the soap is evidence that he has been in the bathroom. He's the one who puts specks on camera lenses, creating hazy horizons; he's been known to cause flurred-up pipes and thus slow down the flow of things.
This little creature is prone to depression, and sitting near to him can engender woolly thinking.
Make friends with him to prevent his mischief and to regain clarity.




Morgan or Morgana Le Fay
Morgana is one of the greatest of all faery queens.
She is skilled in necromancy and the ancient art of shape shifting, able to be whatever she desires.
She soars throught the night on raven's wings, landing silently in your dreams to work her dark enchanments.
Well versed in star craft and arcane healing powers ( with knowledge gleaned from Merlin himself ), she is the mistress of the mystical arts of sexuality and high magick.
Hers is a complex nature, neither totally benificient nor totally malign.
Her faults are anger, resentment, and, true to faery nature, using her cunning arts against those who offend her.
Yet, although she schemes against King Arthur ( her half brother ), it is on her lap that he rests his dying head as she and two other dark queens sail him to Avalon to be healed.
It is her necessary role to be found at the crux of the drama in our lives, working towards wisdom and healing in dramatic, difficult times. She guides in moments of forceful emotions, such as anger, bitterness, resentment, and sexual jealousy.
The disturbing influence of the dark queen can lead to profound change.
The three powerful days at the dark of the moon are this faery's special time - when all processes are internalized and concealed.
It is then that Morgana comes to us to reveal the mystical starlight, the bright points of faery consciousness, which permeates all of matter.
Morgana is an enchantress, who works her magick at the deepest levels - in the dark, secret, hidden places of our minds.
She initiates us into mystic realms of creative imagination where all that is not yet manifest begins the journey into light and form.



Lilu
Crouching on the edge of reason, just beyond reality, this faery is a provocateur of restless nights and erotic dreams.
She is the one who ensnares us with compulsions, fixations, feverish imaginings.
Yet within the dark tangle of images she weaves are the glittering threads of our own healing - for even as she conjures our compulsion she holds out the ability to release their grip, enabling us to confront and let go of all that we no longer need.















Slippery Faery
All faeries are elusive ( and illusive ) creatures.
This faery is particularly slippery, making objects slip out of your fingers and smash against the floor.
She haunts kitchens, and glassware shops, and posh ceramic galleries.
She also contrives slips of the tongue: when you are under her influence, the wrong word just slips right out of your mouth.
Her specialty is the Freudian slip, which reveals too much about yourself.


















Death


She is, perhaps, the most feared of all faeries.
The Irish know her as the banshee, a faery woman who keens and wails in the night, fortelling death.
In Scotland, she's the Washer at the Ford, washing the grave clothes of those about to die.
Her shadowy figure appears to each one of us at some point in our lives, bearing an irresistable summons from another world.
Sometimes, we can refuse the call for awhile but, eventually we must follow.
She holds out a vision of our past. Does it shine with joy? Or is it clouded by too many things we neglected to do?
It's too late to make changes now. The Death Faery awaits, ready to lead us into a future of our own making.
Now is the dreaded moment, We must take her hand. It is time to go.

Leanan Sidhe
This beguiling creature is the Irish faery mistress, or faery muse, who inspires artists, poets, and musicians.
Her enchanments stimulate creativity until it burns with a bright, fierce flame.
The sheer intensity of this vision will eventually leave the artist hollow eyed and worn, his gift in ashes.
Artists visited by the Leanan Sidhe are said to be touched by genius but often die young.

















Rust Faerie
Yesterday this faery told me she was a slight madness engendered by eating too much bacon ...
but I don't believe everything a faery says.
Today she states that she is the one who maintains correct levels of iron in the blood.
Her work is in the liver, recycling iron. If this faery becomes vague and inattentive, anemia can result.
In this faery form, we see femal energy, moving into balnce with the male.
Iron represents stasis; it is inflexible and masculine.
The intransingence is transformed, when it rusts, by the feminine aspect of water and oxygen, the very essence of life. Rust, then, is formed of the cold reason of iron transformed into red oxide; the color represents passion, life renewal, and the blood of the earth.
Shamans used body paint made of red oxide in many mystical rites, and in the ancient world it was used for ritual decoration of corpses and bones.
Water of a rusty color was deemed to have magical properties - such as the famous healing waters of Holy Chalice Well in Glastonbury, England.
This Rusty faery interacts with us on many different levels, concerned particularly with bodily health, decay, and regeneration.
But you might know her best in one of her more annoying guises:
as the cause of that first rust spot on that shiny new chrome surface.

Nippers
In the corner of old maps, one used to find the declaration, "Here be dragons."
This image being a map of Faery declares: "Here be nippers." In fact, here be several little nippers, two knockers, and one late blight.
Orchards have always been magical places, haunted by many spirits.
In Somerset, the spirit of the oldest tree was known as Apple Tee Man; he was propitiated with songs and cider to maintain fertility.
Yorkshire orchards were haunted by a fierce bogey called Awd Gogge, who frightened children but, protected the orchard fruit before the harvest.
The apple tree is an ancient symbol of the axis mundi, or the center of life - this orchards are a natural gateway into the faery realm and one always finds many faeries there.
Here it is autumn in the apple orchard.
The Apple Tree Men look on while the first frost nips their precious fruit.
This is a faery time, for Halloween approches; the old year is ending and the Celtic new year is about to begin. The Trooping faeries prepare to move on to their winter home.
The Apple Queen also prepares, wearing the blossom crown of her youth. She remembers the warmth of the summer sun but does not regret it's passing.
She has nurtured her offspring, seen her promise fulfilled, and now she is ready to move on to the deeper levels of winter.
Through the cold dark months, the Apple Queen will regenerate and prepare for spring.
She is calm. Her work is done now.
The faeries around her busy, for what was given, must now be taken back.
The faery blights have come out to play:
apples, mildewed by faery sneezes, begin to rot, mold, and decay.
These blights might seem destructive, but the withering of the physical allows the full growth of the spirit.
The death of worn out ways of thinking regenerates into something new.